Photoshop Tricks?

[Anthony 0]

This shot was kinda ruined by lots of fish in the background that spoiled the shot. I got rid of them with the healing patch (I know I'm cheating )

but the water in the top left corner looks a bit blotchy. Anyone got any ideas on how I can maybe smooth it out a bit?

 

Thanks

[kdietz 0]

did you blow up the image before using the healing brush tool?

 

I usually blow my images to 400% or 500% to do any backscatter, etc. removal

 

Karl

[frogfish 5]

In addition to blowing up the image, try using lower opacity levels with the stamp or healing tool.

 

Background blue water is often a gradient where even a slight mismatch in the source and target color really stands out. Once things have started to go wrong, efforts to fix the problem often just make it worse.

 

Try using a source for the stamp tool that is exactly the same color as the target for the first stamp - often that will be more or less parallel somewhere in the image - in this case, in the upper right corner. You can also use the eye dropper (sized up) or info palette to check the color number of the source and then locate a matching target area to start the repair process.

 

Frogfish

[craig 0]

Another nice trick is to set the mode to darken rather than normal. I like this better with the clone brush though. Combine this with careful selection of the source and you can avoid color shifts in the water. Reducing opacity sometimes helps this too.

 

If you select the water with the various selection tools then you can be more aggressive with your corrections. The trick is always to preserve the edges of the subjects.

 

Ultimately, bad water will remain bad. You get to choose whether its bad because of particulate matter or because of blotchiness. I don't think any of this is cheating. It's only a matter of perspective. Cutting the subject out and pasting on pretty blue water, now that's cheating! Yet, many landscape photographers do exactly that and they go out to shoot pretty skies just for that reason. Photography is art and how you achieve it is up to you.